We like it when Amazon and Barnes & Noble go to war with each other. We like it because when the two sides try to undercut and one-up each other, the consumer wins every time. These two are responsible for sparking an eBook reader price war that brought significant savings to the eReader market in a short period of time, and it looks as though the two sides are getting ready to force the other's hand once more.
Even as all other Android tablets seem hopelessly incapable of holding a candle to the Apple iPad, Amazon’s upcoming Kindle Fire can already be seen glaring rather invitingly (or ominously if you’re Apple) in the distance. Its initial dazzle is perhaps largely due to its highly affordable price and cloud-accelerated Silk browser. While its hard to look beyond its unbelievably low price, certain folks are much more interested in the latter.
Amazon has made small tweaks to its Kindle e-book format over the years, but now the retailer has surprised the industry again by announcing a new HTML5 version of the Kindle format called Format 8. This approach leverages a toolset that already has wide support and allows a richer experience -- perfect for magazines and comics.
Amazon did more than just throw down the gauntlet when it announced its $200 Kindle Fire tablet, the e-tailer may have also scared off some of the competition altogether. Oddly enough, the Kindle Fire might actually help Microsoft increase its presence in the mobile market, as OEMs look to Windows 8-based slates in order to avoid a price war among Android tablets.
The idea of Amazon’s Silk browser, for the Kindle Fire is an intriguing one. By caching web assets ahead of time, Amazon hopes to accelerate the browsing experience. But running all user traffic through Amazon’s EC2 cloud has made some privacy-minded people a little uneasy. Now members of Congress are starting to ask questions, and some of them are not totally ridiculous.
Remember when “Netflix” and “Streaming video” were virtually synonyms? Yeah, those were the days. Then, in the course of three disastrous months, Netflix jacked prices by 60 percent, announced it was splitting off the DVD business, and then announced that, no, actually, it was going to keep DVDs in house after all. The wacky moves sent investors fleeing like rats and confused customers looking for alternatives – alternatives like Amazon Prime Instant Video. The service offers unlimited streaming and Amazon has signed several new content deals since Prime Instant Video’s launch in March. But is it a Netflix killer? Let’s find out.
Just how big could the $200 Kindle Fire be when it launches next month? Pretty friggin’ big. Not “Bigger than the iPad” big – at least not yet – but some sales forecasts and thought-provoking, yet unofficial calculations by an Android developer show that the Fire and its custom Android 2.3 interface could own a bigger slice of the market pie than all Android Honeycomb tablets combined before the end of the year.
The Kindle Fire isn’t even due to ship to consumers for another month, but already it has attracted its first patent suit. Smartphone Technologies LLC, which as far as we can tell doesn’t actually make anything, has sued Amazon for infringing on four of its patents. These patents seem to describe operating a touchscreen device by tapping on icons; apparently that’s a real patent. 
Amazon has always been coy when it come to releasing sales numbers, and the case of the new Kindle Fire is no exception. But if the newest leak is to be believed, someone working for the company is a little less secretive. A spreadsheet detailing the pre-orders to this point shows some incredible numbers. In just five days, over 250,000 Kindle Fires have been ordered.
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